With currently over 1, 000 visitors every day to these pages, I am confirmed in the belief that
the best changes and additions to these pages come about due to the comments of visitors. Your
comments are valuable! If there are questions on adoption that should be addressed, and are not
well addressed in these pages, then I especially welcome your comments. You may E-mail me at
bbetzen@openadoption.org.

I hope you find these pages to have valuable information for use in your adoption and parenting
plans. It takes work to plan an adoption. Beware of short cuts. They will most often fail.

If short cuts do not fail now, they may in 20 years when your child continues to ask increasingly serious
questions about his/her adoption.

The truth cannot safely be hidden.

Also, the core of adoption truths does not change over time.
Therefore I have decided to leave unchanged many sections of these pages, such
as the one that follows, written almost 10 years ago. The truths of
adoption do not change. We humans have always had a need to know our
origins. The driving force behind open adoption is nothing new.

I am writing in these pages the adoption advice I would give within my own family. It is the
advice they would receive if they were to consider the placement of a child they are expecting, or
the bringing of an infant or older child, or children, into their home through adoption.

I hope you will find the information on these pages to be valuable. I welcome your comments and
recommendations for improving them to better answer your questions in these areas.

Everything written in these pages, unless stated otherwise, is only my own opinion. Every
professional in the adoption field, that is more concerned about children than making money, will
agree that the issues presented in these pages must be addressed in a healthy adoption process.
This is true even if there is not agreement with the conclusions I have reached. These issues must
be explored so our adoption practices will improve. The adoption process must gain the dignity
and respect that children touched by it so richly deserve.

Children touched by adoption must be able to benefit to the greatest extent possible from the
adoption process. There is good reason to believe that far too often a maximum benefit is not
being obtained with current adoption practice. It is hoped these pages will help in a small way.